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Cold Feet - Floor Vent Heat Not Great

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#2 ·
Yes, I've found the odyssey to be not so great at heating in the winter. There is basically too much air going elsewhere. I even complained to the dealership about it and checked another van as I thought mine had issues with sending too much air to the windshield when asking for floor heat but it appears that's the way it is. It helps a little if you manually close the side vents as these get air even when you set it to floor only. You can't do much about the windshield vents though... and it's annoying on a long drive when you get your face cooked while your feet are left in the cold.

The ironic part is that in the 3rd row you can get 100% floor heat and it blows hot-hot-hot!
 
#3 ·
Something does not sound right - we are not experiencing this in our 2013. If anything, I've noticed our 2013 Ody directs MORE air to the floor vents when in heating mode than our previous 2004 did. Not that the 2004 had poor heating characteristics, but that van sent more air to the two side dash vents (near the driver and front passenger doors) than our 2013 does. I had gotten into the habit of closing those two dash vents 50% when in heating mode to direct more air to the floor. In the 2013, even with those side dash vents wide open, I can barely feel any air from them.

Not to state the obvious, but make sure you have the directional setting to the floor only, and more importantly do not manually increase the fan speed, let the climate control do that. The only reason I say that is my wife recently had a similar complaint about poor heating. On the next drive I noticed the vent setting was on floor/windshield, and the fan speed was manually turned up. The system was essentially delivering more (cooler) air than warmest possible air, and it was split between floor and windshield. Once the system was set to floor, and desired warm temperature, the heating performance (and perception of warmth) was restored.
 
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#4 ·
Ours is a 2014 so maybe they changed something? I'm pretty sure there was a refresh of the HVAC controls along with the other minor changes they made for that year. Also it's an SE so we don't have automated climate control. I usually leave the fan at 3/7 but that doesn't seem to have a huge impact on heating and definitely no impact on the ratio of floor/windshield/side air flow. If I turn it down further, there's barely any air flow to the floor.

And yes, it's set to floor only :) If I set it to floor-and-something, there's even less air going down there. That's why I suspected a malfunction at first. The fan makes a lot more noise when I select floor only, as if it was trying to blow into a vent that's not quite open.
 
Discussion starter · #5 ·
I agree with woodpecker that it's an issue.

I have the heat set to "HI" meaning highest possible temp. I have the vent control set to floor only. And I manually increase the fan to test. When I stick my hand down by my feet, I can feel the air a little bit, but it's not as hot as it should be. It's almost like there's a leak in the system and the air is getting slightly cooled before it exits the vents by your feet.

In all fairness, it's been wildly cold here lately (-25 to -30 celsius) so perhaps I'm expecting too much. I find the heat from the other vents, including chest level and windshield level to be fine...but my feet are still cold! I realize as well that hot air rises, but never experienced this significant of a difference. My 2008 Civic can keep my feet warm just fine.

Any other feedback out there?
 
#7 ·
I have noticed the exact same thing with our 2014 EX-L. Compared to our old van which had great heat, this one seems to have some kind of vent issues. Barely any air comes out in the second row. Not much more for the front seats. But , if you are in the third row wow forceful air and hot. It almost looks like the air vents for floor in the second row are blocked by carpet or a ridge. Thought of putting something underneath to raise that plastic vent up. We have cold weather in Georgia, but if we lived up north this would really bother me.
Looking at the new 2016 Pilot. I like it. You can get it with captain chairs, may have to check out the heat in it.
 
#8 ·
We have a 2014 and the only time we have trouble with floor heat is when my wife take it off AUTO. For some reason even when she directs it to the floor, the heat at the floor is worst then with it on AUTO.
Granted we are here in California so our "cold" is maybe low 40s this winter.
 
#10 ·
I have a 2014 Odyssey an joined the site to research to cold feet problem. I live between Rochester and Syracuse on Lake Ontario and my feet, especially the left, ache with the cold. Does Honda ever look at these forums?
 
#11 ·
JanK1 said:
I have a 2014 Odyssey an joined the site to research to cold feet problem. I live between Rochester and Syracuse on Lake Ontario and my feet, especially the left, ache with the cold. Does Honda ever look at these forums?
Click to expand...
Well, if you look into floor vents, they are clearly designed to warm the arch of your right floor, not your left foot:) I also noticed that the 'floor' mode makes a loud noise somewhere under the front console, as if the air is escaping into the firewall instead of the actual vents.
 
#12 ·
I have not noticed this issue in our 2014 for the front seats. However, I had a 2015 Ody loaner from the dealer for a week and noticed that when warming up the van when really cold with Auto, for over 20 minutes, the heat was alway directed to the windshield by the HVAC system, even though the defroster was not set. In order to get heat to my feet I had to change from auto to manually direct to floor. I would expect that after 5-10 minutes of warm up the system would balance the heat, but even after 20 minutes it did not.
 
#13 ·
Hmm...I have not noticed this issue at all in our 2011 Touring. Floor heat seems to be fine - even if split with windshield. And my wife definitely would have complained by now as her feet are always cold!
 
#15 ·
One thing to keep in mind is that there is a large volume of air to move in an Odyssey and that until the vehicle is warmed up, there will not be a great deal of heat. What I find works best is if you warm up the cabin at the same time. So using the floor / dash setting will warm up the whole vehicle and then you can switch to floor only to keep your tootsies toasty :)
 
#16 ·
I have a 2014 EX–L and have no problem with the heaterkeeping my feet warm. Yesterday, I droveto our mountain home and the temp ranged from 10F to -25F degrees. . Inoticed that heat was coming out of the top side vents as well as a good amount of volume of air atmy feet. The middle vents on the dashwere not active. I had the inside temp set at 74 and on theAuto setting.
I had kind of the opposite problem you are having. My feet were almost too warm and my leftshoulder was chilled as was the left side of the steering wheel . As you can imagine, the air next to the doorwindow was reflecting a massive amount of cold air. At first I reset the temp to 75, but that was toohot on my feet and most of the cabin. Ithen reset the temp to 74 and redirected the vent on the upper left to point alittle more toward the right and that seemed to solve the issue. At -25 the heater performed just aboutperfect. It was interesting to watch thewater temp gauge fluctuate between normal and about an 1/8th of an inch fromthe bottom of the gauge when descending a long hill. I did not notice much variation in the heatertemp.
Maybe you have a door somewhere that is not functioning properly.
 
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Golferjack
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